The Link between Architecture and the Genesis of Islamic Ethical Behavior

Moral values and taking into account their extension via the external and internal capacities of art and ar chitecture can serve as a starting point for the devel opment of ethics in human. Modern man’s need for a spiritual basis is particularly pressing due to the cur rent spiritual crisis his existence faces. Ethics can serve as a spiritual element in the genesis of a spiritu al space provided that it strengthens the practical ethics in the users of that space. The incarnation of this requires a framework, and geometry as the body and physical structure in architecture can take in this conceptual content and establish a link between eth ics and architectural space so as to furnish the fun damentals of an ethical behavior. The key question of this research is that how geometry and ethics are linked to generate an ethical behavior in human?The research method is qualitative. The main pur pose was to determine the ways in which ethics is generated in man’s behavioral acts. First, man’s was examined via attempts to identify and describe his behavior before analyzing the origins of human traits to determine the “susceptible areas.” Then these are as were analyzed in the “different stages of the de velopment of moral behavior.” Finally, the potential role of Islamic art and architecture in affecting the “receptive areas” was investigated.The ethic-generating geometry pattern, shaped through ordering the “geometry of areas” in terms of the pattern of ethical behavior formation stages, and the ethic-oriented spatial-geometrical organization ordered as heart geometry, wisdom geometry, and geometry of the five senses, and the repetition of the geometry units and the repetition of the pattern comprise the findings of the research. This organiza tion reflects the order of the formation of architec tural spaces, which will set the scene through leaving permanent impact on his soul (nafs) and its dimen sions for the disposition of the users of the space to ethics as they pass through the latter. A spatio-geometrical instance of the process is found in the architecture of zoorkhaneh (a traditional Iranian gym nasium). The process is incarnated in the form and geometry of the architecture of zoorkhaneh, the space function (the social-human organization within the zoorkhaneh) and the neighborhood architecture (culture).Finally, geometry and ethics in the generation of an ethical behavior meet at the common point of the building ethical behavior are linked at the common effectiveness point of the susceptibility of the three functions of the soul and the impact of geometry on them. In other words, man’s souls has three aspects, and the geometry’s effect of each of these provides a common point for the conjunction of the ethics with the architectural structure. Affected by the order of the stages of practical ethics (the genesis of ethical behavior), this conjunction give rise to ethical disposi tions in the course of formation of the space. And, the ethic-generating geometry, influenced by the se quence of the ethical behavior pattern in the organi zation of the “geometry of the areas,” furnishing an architectural model for spatial-geometric organiza tion.